“This recognition [of Palestine] comes as a result of political and diplomatic efforts exerted by the Palestinian Foreign Ministry through its embassies abroad,” Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said.
The motion submitted by the opposition Socialists was backed by all the political groupings in the lower house after the ruling People’s Party (PP) watered down the wording hours after the massacre in a Jerusalem synagogue that claimed the lives of five people and injured many others.
At first Spain’s parliament twas to vote on a non-binding motion that would “recognize Palestine as a state,” but after the massacre, the spokesman for the Popular Party said that “The recognition of a Palestinian state should be promoted in a coordinated manner within the EU, in the framework of a final settlement in the Middle East.”
The Anti Defamation League called the vote ‘insulting’ on Wednesday. “On a day of mourning across Israel and in Jewish communities around the world, the Spanish parliament saw fit to urge its government to recognize a Palestinian state,” ADL’s National Director Abraham Foxman said. “This insulting decision will not contribute to peace, and will only encourage the Palestinian Authority’s intransigence on direct negotiations with Israel.”
”While other European governments have not followed Sweden’s reckless act of unilateral recognition, these so-called symbolic parliamentary votes in Spain – and earlier in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and forthcoming in France – undermine confidence in a constructive role for the European Union to promote Israeli-Palestinian negotiations,” Foxman added.
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